A group of Canadore College students are organizing a rally just off grounds of the main campus.
Friday at 1 pm, organizers Andrea Pond, Brittini Duhaime, and Brendon Lafleche are asking their fellow students to stand together and demonstrate to both sides of the labour impasse that they want to get back to school. The students will rally across from the faculty picket lines at the Education Centre.
With the strike now in its fourth week, students are becoming less optimistic about the semester finishing on time without significant loss of holidays.
From the Canadore College Student Rally Facebook page:
As students we are stuck, being used as bargaining chips was not what anyone imagined their first semester of college to be. I was optimistic the first 2 weeks, hoping that by the end of reading week we would get notice that the strike would be over. It’s now in its 4th week and we are being threatened with 5 to 10 day wait for that vote to happen. We need OPSEU and CEC to get back to the bargaining table immediately and settle on a fair offer. We need our voice heard and our voice is louder with numbers!
Let’s rally, let make our voice heard, let’s appeal to the teachers on the picket lines to remember us and think about us and vote yes. Get us back into the classroom and try to salvage what is left of this semester. Who will stand with me?
OPSEU, the union representing the faculty have urged their members to refuse the latest offer from the colleges.
The colleges have asked the Ontario Labour Board for a forced vote on their offer and a suspension of the strike by the faculty. A vote could take as long as 10 days to organize and complete. The colleges have also since rejected a counter-offer from OPSEU.
